Here we develop and share thoughts on what folks outside the federation of wiki-writing need to be aware of, to be comfortable navigating in a wiki lineup.
> For communicating to others in the wiki.cafe pod we post news here: Reading in wiki news. We all have a page with this name.
For starters we'll just list in ad hoc fashion, things that come to mind as we write this wiki. Later we may rationalise and categorise this list.
Marc Pierson has some thoughts on How-to-read-content How to read content (navigate)
Navigating in the page lineup
👉 The lineup - Instead of fresh pages opening in fresh browser windows, they open to the right of the page whose link you clicked, in the same window. This is called a page lineup. The lineup is a big deal 🙂 - a great feature of federated wiki.
👉 Zooming - If the lineup gets quite full, zoom-out will display more pages.
👉 Left-right arrow keys - If a page in the lineup disappears off the left or right side, the arrow keys will shift focus left or right within the lineup. This will reveal pages scrolled off the screen.
👉 Back - If you've altered the page lineup by clicking a link, and want it back as it was, use the <Back> button in the browser. In fact, this works just as it does in an ordinary web page view (but it restores whole lineups, not just single pages).
> If your operating system allows swiping gestures, this is a very fast way of flipping thro links on a page, which stays in place in the lineup.
👉 Shift-click on a link - Opens a new page to the right of the lineup, not (as usual) to the right of the present page, replacing the rest of the lioneup). This retains all the pages that are already in the lineup.
👉 Drag a page left-right by its top margin - so that the pages you're interested in are next to each other for convenience of readin g and comparing.
👉 Drag a page off the screen - by its top margin - when you no longer want it in the lineup.
Search and meta-information
👉 <Search> - This box in the bottom toolbar displays page references in the present neighborhood which match the search field. Clicking on one of these opens the page to the right of the lineup.
👉 Neighborhood - All wikis that have been visited in the present session have flags shown at the right-hand end of the bottom toolbar. This collection of sites is 'the neighborhood'. All pages in the neighborhood are 'known to' the present site, and can be <Search>ed from this one.
👉 Rosters - Clicking on >> in a roster will add to the neighborhood the sites whose flags are displayed in this row. This increases the search space accessed thro <Search>
👉 <Hamburger menu> in the bottom toolbar displays a set of meta-information options, including display Recent changes